Astrakhan is a port city on the lower part of the Volga River and a large military harbor on the Caspian Sea. To the east, Astrakhan region borders Kazakhstan; to the west, the region faces the North Caucasus. Its proximity to that unstable area is... MORE

After a year of sparring with Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov over several dozen hectares of disputed land, the president of Ingushetia decided to distinguish himself in yet another field. According to official information, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov has been strenuously trying to purge the republican interior ministry’s... MORE

Much has been and will be said about the 150th anniversary of the Circassian “genocide” by Russian forces that will be marked in 2014 when the site of that mass murder is scheduled to be the venue of the Winter Olympics. But this week marks... MORE

The high expectations on the part of Circassians of benevolence from the Russian state were cut short by the Russian government’s attitude toward the repatriation of the Syrian Circassians. “Even in a ‘life-and-death’ situation, Russia will never help us,” the well-known Circassian activist Andzor Kabard... MORE

On July 27, President Vladimir Putin met in Moscow with Aleksandr Khloponin, his plenipotentiary representative in the North Caucasian Federal District. Khloponin informed the Russian president about his work to improve the socio-economic and political situation in this volatile region (https://kremlin.ru/news/16066). He boasted of cutting... MORE

On July 17, the Kabardino-Balkarian interior minister summed up the results of the first six months of the year during a press conference in the republican capital, Nalchik. The minister was forced to admit that the government had failed to achieve decisive results in the... MORE

Nowadays, the leader of each North Caucasian republic is expected to select either the Chechen path of development or the Kabardino-Balkarian path. The Chechen path is crude, concentrating all power and resources into one person’s hands. The Kabardino-Balkarian path is about professing calmness and being... MORE

On July 17, a frequent writer on Circassian topics, Andrei Yepifantsev, attacked Circassian activists for “nationalism” and pushing for help to the Syrian Circassians caught in the civil war in that Middle Eastern country. “Three primary themes of the Circassian nationalist movement are recognition of... MORE

Nearly 10,000 Chechens have sought political asylum in Germany since the start of 2013, an unprecedented number that is nearly six times as great as the flow a year earlier—and greater than the number of Afghans and Syrians doing so in the course of the... MORE

Experts have warned that the Dagestani authorities are opting for more heavy-handed measures in their efforts to resolve security issues in the republic in contrast to the previous republican leadership. On July 16, a roundtable on the remaking of Dagestani politics after the appointment of... MORE